Section of Microbiology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Section of Microbiology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Department of Applied Medical Sciences, Al-Jouf University, Quryyat, Saudi Arabia.
Bioresour Technol. 2018 Dec;270:303-310. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.09.006. Epub 2018 Sep 4.
Keratin refers to a group of insoluble and recalcitrant protein materials. Slaughterhouses produce large amount of keratinous byproducts, which are either disposed or poorly valorized through costly thermochemical processes for animal feed formulation. Learning from nature, keratinolytic microbial consortia stand as a cost-efficient and environmental friendly way to valorize this recalcitrant resource. Directed selection was applied to enrich soil-born microbial consortia, using sequential batch cultivations in keratin medium, while measuring enzymes activity and monitoring consortia compositions via 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. A promising microbial consortium KMCG6, featuring mainly members of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria, was obtained. It possessed keratinolytic activity with <25% residual substrate remaining, which also displayed a high degradation reproducibility level after long-term cryopreservation. This work represents an advance in the field of α-keratin degradation with potential for practical applications.
角蛋白是一组不溶性和难处理的蛋白质材料。屠宰场产生大量角蛋白副产品，要么被处理掉，要么通过昂贵的热化学工艺进行低值化处理，用于动物饲料配方。受自然启发，角蛋白水解微生物群落是一种具有成本效益和环保的方法，可以对这种难处理的资源进行增值利用。定向选择用于富集土壤来源的微生物群落，使用角蛋白培养基进行连续批培养，同时通过 16S rRNA 基因扩增子测序测量酶活性并监测群落组成。获得了一种有前途的微生物群落 KMCG6，其主要成员为拟杆菌门和变形菌门。它具有角蛋白水解活性，残留底物<25%，经过长期冷冻保存后，其降解重现性水平也很高。这项工作代表了 α-角蛋白降解领域的一项进展，具有实际应用的潜力。
